Topic: The everything Xbox thread

There's nothing exactly wrong with the online of Battlefront II... Except it's basically Star Wars: Garden Warfare instead of Star Wars Battlefront. That includes how the modes feel to play as well as how the classes play.

@NEStalgia Well, as long as I'm slightly less worse than you, I'll cherish that second spot...

P.S.

Didn't know you were THAT bad at playing the Arkham games.
Stealth is relatively easy to perform and/or maintain, in my opinion, and it does indeed make the games that much more entertaining.

@redd214 Yeah, perhaps I'll try it anyway. It's free after all. But in general, this is not my type of game, and I would most certainly never voluntarily buy it. Even if I do end up liking it, then I still won't, but I will in that case keep the free version on my hard drive...

@BlueOcean Well, I wouldn't exactly want to call it patience. I'm just a dominant person, so it's more about not wanting to step down or give in. And I usually don't make any factual statements unless I know I'm right, so there's that as well. Saves a lot of embarrassment due to having to admit to being wrong...

Child of Light is a nice game, and I actually have it in my games library already, seeing as it was a free Game with Gold, quite a few months ago. In April 2015 to be exact.

@BlueOcean Depending on what elements of the game/world hook you, you could find yourself disappointed by other entries in the series compared to 1. Most people like the latter ones (especially 2) much more, but if you like 1 as much as me you may find it to be a little of a let-down (Still tons of fun, and technically better in many ways, but never rekindling the magic of 1.) I thought it was just memory playing better than reality, but nope, when I re-bought one for the X, the magic is still there. But definitely play the 2 trilogy after 1 since it's the only ones in the series that the assassins have direct story tie-ins to each other (and Revelations actually is a crossover that acts as additional chapters late in Altair's life as an older Ezio retraces his ancestors steps.) Plus the Desmond arc goes from 1 through the 2's and ends in 3. Though the Desmond arc goes downhill after 2 (Pretty sure nobody knew where it was going once Jade left Ubi.) Since it's already a remaster, I doubt X enhancement is on the table though. (IV was also weird in that it's not really Assassin's Creed. It's a cool pirate game with AC elements shoehorned in by force. I think they realized it was A) Not an AC game and B) Made a better IP elsewhere and made it into Skull & Bones.)

AC1 over BotW huh? Hmm.... I can't totally agree, but I can't argue it too much....I'd hold them equal for different reasons for me. Both are high points of my gaming years

Yeah, even Origins a lot of people were calling it "Breath of the Assassin" when it came out. They definitely had pulled in a lot of BotW elements. Odyssey cranks it to 11. It prompts at the start for "classic mode", a traditional guided experience with map markers, or "exploration mode", without most map markers, requiring you to explore on your own (and suggests that's how it's meant to be played.) I didn't get it at first until I started playing and realized "ohhhh, they mean BotW mode!" I mean they even included a korok effigy....they're not hiding it It definitely has that BotW feel in its exploration. It's blatant, but I'm not complaining

Fable 4 has me drooling every time I think about it. The rumor is still that it would be Playground making it (a Fable in the FH4 engine? Yes, please!) However there's a rumor that MS is buying out Obsidian. I'm actually not entirely happy about that as I"m not a fan of concentrated acquisitions of well regarded studios by 1st parties...especially ones with MS's track record of butchery, but it did make me wonder if it could be related to Fable 4. A Fable 4 from Obsidian with an MS budget would be life altering

All this Assassin's Creed talk, here you go guys THIS is the one you've been waiting for lol 😂

@NEStalgia Yes but to be honest Breath of the Wild also copies a lot of elements from Assassin's Creed but the gameplay is more boring. Of course BotW has good things but...

The key members of Lionhead Studios had left the studio before Microsoft closed it so at the end of the day the original staff were already split in many different new studios. Playground could make a great open world but I guess that Obsidian too. The good thing about Playground is that they are British like Lionhead. Where are Obsidian headquarters?

@BlueOcean It's not much different from the Retro Metroid Prime discussion. People complain that Retro isn't doing Prime 4 yet some Prime 1-3 devs left Retro sometime after Prime 3.

@BlueOcean Yeah BotW implements a little of the Ubi open world system, but IMO I find BoTW to be a little more TES inspired than AC. It doesn't hurt that Aonuma specifically mentioned his playing of Skyrim as an influence, but his explanation that "that didn't influence the game, but discovering towns was fun and rewarding and inspired the idea of climbing the mountains" makes zero sense BotW feels kind of more "Skyrim Lite" than AC influenced in how it plays to me.

Well, Lionhead was a mess even before Microsoft picked them up. Peter Molyneaux is a great visionary but not great at implementing games that work, within a timely manner, and on a meaningful budget. But still, usually when key talent bails from a company like that it indicates things were not very good in there. I don't know how current MS operates. I know that back in the OG XBox era MS utterly castrated any studio it bought on the inside and forced them into "the Microsoft way" of doing things which almost always devastated the team. They applied business software methodologies and management structures on games and had to design games around business targets rather than product objectives. It was ugly. It's certainly possible since those days it's a lot better. We don't have any current examples other than Rare to compare and that's not very current. OTOH, Obsidian + Playground resources could make an utterly amazing RPG. Obsidian's US-based. They're formed of mostly former key people at Black Isle/Interplay (Wasteland, Fallout, Baldur's Gate II (Bioware gets the credit but BI did a lot of work on it) etc, and mostly have a better recent track record on RPGs than Bioware. When BI went belly up with a hostile takeover, most of the Black Isle guys split off and founded Obsidian. Brian Fargo the original founder and creator of Wasteland & Fallout eventually started InExile with a handful of people who hadn't gone to Obsidian. Thus Pillars of Eternity from Obsidian and Wasteland 2 from InExile: It's the two halves of the original BG/FO teams. (To make it more confusing technically Fallout 1 is the real Wasteland 2, so Wasteland 2 is a cheeky way of saying it's the real Fallout 3 )

@Grumblevolcano That's right.

@redd214 I....can't.....even....literally.......like.....wow....

I'm afraid to find out how Ubi will handle it on mobile. "Submit $0.99 to buy 5 arrows?" "This enemy is armored. Buy armor piercing hidden blade for $4.99?"

@Grumblevolcano Yeah, Armature is more Retro than Retro now.

In fact I still wonder if Retro really exists as a studio or has been gutted by now. They haven't been seen since DKC:TF, and I wouldn't doubt if they just full time assist EAD or whatever the new name for it is.

As a Wave Race fan I hate that the Nintendo team that lives in US is forced to make Mario vs. Donkey games for decades.

I wonder what Retro is doing... if they are doing anything.

Back to Xbox! Have you discovered a new game thanks to Game Pass? I had never played Rocket League and it's fun for short sessions.

I've been meaning to look at more stuff from Game Pass. The only games so far have been Gears of War 4 and Zoo Tycoon. Sea of Thieves also a part of that, which has probably been the most played game of the three.

@ThanosReXXX @NEStalgia Ok, this has been the week from heck. SERIOUSLY and my whole team called out today (including my boss taking a half a day) so I'm drowning in work over here. However I wanted to kinda get back to our discussion if either of y'all still care (tossing in spoilers so those that don't care don't have to read. The good news is I bought the game so I got to play it. The bad news is my complaints still stand (plus a few more)...deep breath

So let's start off with the good. I like Kassandra's voice acting...and I'll admit to spending way too much time staring at her arms. Madam is a tall drink of water. I love the size of the map (even though traversing that is a pain...I'll get to that.) I think the conquest battles and the mercenary system are a lot of fun although the level scaling is kinda odd. I had Stentor chase me into a higher level area and the he took steroids apparently so he could two shot me (I guess I'm going to get the bad ending but somethings should not be forgiven. And I can hold a grudge).

Ok Thanos this part is more for you. My complaint has nothing to do with historical accuracy (three reasons...history is written by the victors, we live in a male centric world and the AC universe is full of female assassins (part of the reason I like it so much) but they don't get main line games as a stand alone. It has to do with marketing, female protags in video games and AC lore. At which point NES is going to start to giggle. Now I totally get that AC lore has gotten on a bus gone on a trip, came back with amnesia and facial reconstruction but the basic lore of the animus is mostly (MOSTLY NES!) intact. Which is the animus functions as a projection of genetic memories of an ancestor (or with abstergo's version everybody's DNA). My issue is that the premise behind making Odyssey a gender select game is that they found two strands of DNA and it's so corrupt that we dont even know the biological sex of the owner. and yet SOMEHOW the animus can glean enough to knit to make a whole game. I can take some hand waving... but not a lot of hand waving if you go out of your way to make and explain your lore which AC did...at first.

So worst case the animus is making stuff up (because remember the animus is not a simulator and is more of a 3d memory projector or lucid dream and when used as one (subject 16) its not very good at it...this isnt a holodeck) which breaks lore so that means that we have a "special animus" in play (which I've been hearing that is what ubisoft might be going with to shut down questions...) or the game should be a jumbled mess. Either way unreliable narrator. Also considering that each person of the DNA strands should have lived separate lives. So the gender choice plot falls through as well since the animus is supposed to make a projection of actual genetic memory...as in stuff that happened and is set in stone. It breaks lore to have my game have Kassandra be the protag and yours to have Alexios unless we start putting alternate universe shenanigans on this and that is too much for an already somewhat busy plot with a precursor races and the modern day morons that are humanity fighting over their left over tech. At best we should have had two games but again that requires an official protag (which according to the book but NOT to the marketing is Kassandra). (personally I would have played the heck out of a EvilAlexios game... And I'm always the paragon)

My complaint is that Ubisoft needlessly made a lore plothole to keep a male protag front and center. As of today AC has never had a mainline game with a female protag going solo. I love liberation but it was a vita game. Me and 6 other people bought it (and i took it back because the controls were horrid) and by the time the HD version came out....nobody cared, plus it didn't move the plot forward as much as III which as a side game it wasn't supposed to. We have games where you play as a female sometimes but never as the leading lady. It's 2018 ...Samus did this in 86.

Now I'm sure the easy answer to this is companies need to make money and it is about appealing to the target userbase. Which is the universal short hand for don't change the status quo because it makes the majority members uncomfortable. Being in a majority still doesn't mean the world revolves around them. It merely means that they have the lions share of control. Doesn't make it right, accurate or fair. Especially when dealing with a franchise about different cultures. While this is a game and I understand that, this also falls into the bucket of representation and affirmation of females (and female role models) in media. I know that most men are going to role their eyes...because it is a problem that they don't have, but the part that makes this annoying is it is unnecessary. AC's entire point that this is a species wide conflict, meaning dudes, women, of all ages, backgrounds and races are taking part in this. IF this was a single narrative for one protag like say God of War, I would go "I get it"...this is Kratos' story. Which is what I usually do for most male centric games and I keep it moving and if I'm lucky play something with a female lead instead. So the first point is that sexism (even "benign" sexism as in "men wanna play alexios cuz they think he is cool" which was NES's counter because you can keep walking that and say oh lets make a billion ezio games because men of western European descent...which would include white americans... and that argument goes sideways a bit.) prompted the marketing and not narrative. Which again isn't needed for two reasons...goes against AC's universe in general and there are games with female leads that men play and don't get their jock straps twisted. I have faith in men that they will continue to NOT be bothered by playing as a woman (don't care the reason at this point...that is a whole other discussion that I don't want to get into). Also NES your the dudes wanna be him/think he is cool and the women wanna f him is invalid, because it implies that men have a representation motivation (which unless the gamer is Greek and I have seen a few happy Grecians over this game) which I find highly unlikely. Men are in the majority of games...the race or appearance might not match or resonate but they at least get the primary biological reality correct. And since unlike race or nationality that is a biological reality that you are physically either one or the other that means men get auto representation on about 90 percent of games. That also would have to make the assumption that women play a game character based upon a sexual motivation. I can't speak for heterosexual women (i think they have poor taste anyway lol) but I can say as a homosexual that while I acknowledge that I find Kassandra to be attractive for a bundle of pixels...she's a bundle of pixels... I want to play as a woman because I am a woman and I want to see women doing awesome things even in gaming. So if I don't play her for a sexual motivation and I would have a reason to...I find it a bit of a stretch to think that even the majority of heterosexual women would play as alexios for that reason..besides given the romances unless they are into BL why would they want to play the character romancing women instead of playing the character romancing men and matching their sexual orientation?

The second point is it weakens the story telling any time you have a gender select. Now let me say this with the caveat. If all I can get is a gender select I will take it. I have played as all kinds of characters but honestly after 30 years of gaming playing as a woman is my first priority. I've watched enough anime, american action movies and played enough games that I have a pretty good idea how dude mcdudebro's story is gonna go. I'm at a point that I'm burned out and slowly walking towards offended by that. However the issue with gender selects is that the world treats that character as a male character because of less script to write, Voice acting is expensive (one of the reasons that I'm still anti voice acting...yeah I'm a dinosaur I know), again voice acting is expensive. Even with a character of similar backgrounds... socialization is a thing (so much so that now it is an identity...rather the actual biological reality that prompts said socialization). Simply put women and men don't react to things the same for a variety of reasons. So it feels very artificial when you have a game where the script is the same with a different voice per playthough and some different pronouns. It is the modern version of a cardboard character (link you have been replaced). That hurts both characters in my opinion. All of the other characters in the AC universe are more fleshed out with their own unique nuances...so the EAware approach to gaming shows its seams in my opinion. Again it isn't needed, we have games with female protags and nobody burnt down a studio.

Also the animation. It's fairly obvious with the clipping/hovering hands that the default animation frame is Alexios and that's with Kassandra being larger than most of the women in the game.

Also this makes Odyssey the least AC game in the AC universe. It doesn't feel right. The game's very existence turns the lore on its head...in the same way that ammo clips did in ME2 onward. Not to mention the controls feel so very stiff now (I didn't play origins beyond an hour or two to see if it ran on my PC) and its not about assassinations with brawling as a backup anymore. You can kinda play it like a AC game but a lot of the parkour got stripped and its just not as fluid as earlier games. If this was Ubisoft's The Spartan...I wouldn't care... but it says AC on the box... If Adam and Eve could parkour 75000 years ago what is wrong with Kassandra...she need some yoga? The RPG elements are also killing the AC story but Ima leave that alone for right now. All in all I still say it should have just been a Kassandra game and I think AC is dead. I like this game but not as an AC game. Short of them doing Japan (cuz I'm easy and there has been a dearth of Japan set games recently thank goodness for GoT and Sekiro) this will be my last for a bit. This is black flag 2.5 but worse (I hated black flag...good pirate game TERRIBLE AC game).

I do like the game though. lol. Also NES I have one payment left on my OKAMI STATUE! I'm so excited! No where to put it yet.

I can't wait to make my new avatar.

What is the difference between Cortana and Alexa and what do you use each one for?

@BlueOcean discovered on game pass: technomancer, kameo, gears of war. I never paid any attention to gears until then. Never interested me.... But i discovered it's reallya cool cover shooter.

@thanosrexxx I've got it! I figured out that with Chase cam, quality mode really shows off fh4 best, but in driver and cockpit camera, the 60fps really helps the realism, and makes it less disorienting. So 30 for Chase, 60 for cockpit/driver/sim is my new standard.

@BlueOcean There's actually little difference between the two, seeing as they are both artificial assistants. The main differences are that Cortana is from Microsoft, and Alexa is from Amazon, and that Cortana's strength lies in desktop assistance, both in PC and console environments, while Alexa's strengths are primarily in home use. As such, the two are both overlapping and complimentary to each other.

This article might also shed some light on that for you:
https://www.adweek.com/digital/microsofts-cortana-and-amazons...

@NEStalgia Well, there you go. Problem solved...

@Ryu_Niiyama Okay... that's a lot of text. I was just doing some quick replies, because I've got other stuff to take care of now, so I'm going to have to take a rain check on replying to that, also to read through my own comments again, so I'll get back to you in a day or so.

@ThanosReXXX @BlueOcean Cortana is a tool of the ministry of peace. Alexa is a tool of the ministry of love. Both help you show your love to big brother and the Party.

@ThanosReXXX haha new record! I broke you and NES!

Hmmm ever since the update my xbox has been spinning my external hdds up every 40 to 90 seconds non stop..... That's..... A problem if i don't want to replace drives every 90 days.... Wth did they break?

@Ryu_Niiyama lol you seriously did. May have even beaten ralek. The king is dead, long live the queen!

I have watched some technical videos about Forza Horizon 4 and there is something that should be clarified. The Performance Mode on Xbox One X is not the same quality as the Xbox One S version. The Performance Mode of Forza Horizon 4 on Xbox One X is basically the same quality as the Quality Mode but at 1080p instead of 4K. "It is mostly a trade off between resolution and frame rate". Confirmed by Playground and verified by Digital Foundry. The game was built from scratch for Xbox One X and they managed to get an open-world game running at 60 fps. No bottlenecks or hitches at all.

I was worried that the Performance Mode would be a downgraded mode but it is not except for a few effects being downgraded, basically light reflections. So rest assured that you can fully enjoy the visuals in Performance Mode. This is how I play it and I love it.

@ThanosReXXX Thanks, I read that Cortana and Alexa were both available on Xbox and I was wondering why would we need two.